The researchers at MIT’s Fluid Interfaces Group have developed an app that generating virtual spaces, based on 3D scans of real-world spaces using Google’s Project Tango.

Google’s Tango is an augmented reality platform and using a Tango-powered phone the app Oasis, scans the room. The layout of the space’s floor and walls are then used as the basis for a virtual environment, which can be viewed by putting the same phone into a VR headset.

So far the researchers have made four environments: the aforementioned bucolic paradise; an island surrounded by shipwrecks; a hellish lava flow; and a metallic platform floating in space. As well as walls, furniture can apparently be visualised as rocks or ponds, so you don’t trip up over your own sofa.

The Oasis project’s description says, “Oasis can be used, for example, to create storyspaces where friends and family can remotely participate in a session of storytelling around the campfire. It also adds, “The freedom to move around and interact with the virtual world allows for a new form of storytelling when combined with traditional narration techniques like vocalisation, movement, and gestures. We call this human-in-the-loop-storytelling, distinguishing it from current VR storytelling experiences where the software system is the storyteller.”

There are still many doubts about Oasis’ success, but it has successfully given us a peep into the bright future for VR where physical and digital objects are combined.